Texas drivers will enjoy a little better windshield view starting in March 2015 when safety inspections become tied to vehicle registration.

Texas’ inspection sticker — a front-glass fixture for more than half a century — will go away in the process.

The inspection itself is still required. Vehicle owners will have to get one within 90 days before renewing their registration. They will have to provide proof the inspection was passed, just as they now provide proof of insurance.

“It’s actually going to make vehicles safer because they have to have both to get the sticker,” said Lon Craft, director of legislative affairs for the Texas Municipal Police Association, a statewide police officers group.

Those with widely different numbers on their current registration and inspection stickers — 5 (May) and 11 (November), for example — will have to take care of the two needs in a closer time frame. Procrastinators will crowd inspection places at the end of months instead of during the current first-of-the-month grace period.

The trade-off for any confusion is that many will get a grace period of several months during the transition.

For example, if a car owner’s registration expires in May and his inspection tag expires in June, he will not have to get the car inspected until just before his registration is due for renewal in May 2016.

But if someone’s inspection sticker expires in May, before his registration is up in June, he will have to get an inspection.

The change will lead to millions fewer inspections from next March, when the new rule takes effect, to the end of the transition.

So those in the business of conducting inspections stand to take a short-term loss — but not a big one.

“Inspections as a percentage of the business is pretty small,” said David Chenoweth of Northaven Auto, a general service garage in Richardson. “We do it more for customer convenience.”

The state charges the vendor $14.75 per sticker and mandates a $39.50 charge to the consumer. Factor in the cost of a certified inspector and a $45,000 emissions-testing machine, and the retailer is left without much profit margin.

“We don’t make money on inspections,” said Bruce Strickland, who owns SpeeDee Oil Change & Tune Up locations in Garland and Far North Dallas. Unlike Chenoweth, Strickland says 23 percent of his customers are there to get an inspection — though usually in combination with an oil change.

“If we weren’t having to pay for that $14.75 sticker and kept the price the same, for once we’d make money on an inspection,” Strickland said, though he added that regulators have made no move to change the amount the state charges the stations.

The state stands to save $2 million by discontinuing the inspection stickers, which Texas has required since the 1950s. For decades, the safety inspection sticker rode the windshield solo. But that changed for some with the addition of the TollTag and for all Texans when registration stickers were moved from the rear license plate.

With toll roads spreading across the Dallas-Fort Worth area landscape, the three-sticker windshield has become commonplace.

Drivers will save a little clutter. And beware. There’s a little advantage for the officers as well.

“Having only one sticker to look at, it’ll be easier to spot than having the two,” said Craft, a 24-year veteran of local law enforcement. The officers association, however, took no position on the change.

This report contains material from the Associated Press.

TIMELINE: Windshield stickers

1935 — Texas Department of Public Safety established. Soon thereafter, its troopers operate mobile Safety Lanes for random vehicle testing; those that passed were marked with a windshield sticker in the shape of Texas; those that failed got a small red sticker.

1951 — Texas Legislature votes to require annual inspections.

1969 — Inspection sticker placement moves from the lower right corner of the windshield to the lower left.

1989 — Dallas North Tollway’s TollTag debuts

1994 — Registration stickers move to the windshield from the rear license plate to deter theft.

2015 — Inspection stickers to be eliminated as inspections become a component of applying for registration.